The traditional business model for journalism is in disarray! This is what briggs is talking about in chapter 11, “Building a Digital Audience for News.” How can marketing and analytics save journalism? but better yet can it be the only thing that saves journalism? Well of course it’s not the only thing that can save journalism but as it turns out it can help. According to Briggs, journalism needs to find new benefits from new marketing strategies and measurement tactics. What I do agree with is that in order to to build you audience, you need to analyze what you publish, what your readers like and don’t like, and then do more of what they do like!

Measuring Journalism

As journalism takes on new forms of content like, blogs, video, breaking news updates–to new platforms like e-mail, mobile, Twitter new structures have been put in place. Newsrooms now track and measure everything they do! Tom Chester the news operations manager at the News Sentinel, begins each weekday with a stand up meeting in the newsroom that contains a detailed report of content published and traffic generated the previous day. Why you might ask? Well they want and need everyone to learn a new skill and publish more frequently to more platforms.

Track All That You Publish

Of course journalists everywhere should track all that they publish but of course with constant updates it gets hard to track every single update so Brigg gives us a starter list of content that journalist and newsrooms could be tracking regularly:

Total news stories per day

News stories by topic or section (sports, business, local and so on)

Total blogs posts per day

Blog posts by specific blog

slide shows per week

Video stories per week

Podcasts or other audio stories

News updates and so forth…

The easiest way to all this is with a web-based spreadsheet that all can access.

How to Set Benchmarks

So obviously if the newsrooms are compiling data without setting goals then it’s rather pointless, so set goals so that you can create benchmarks from the content you track and track your production. At Google they call this process OKR, which stands for objectives and key results.

Track your audience

After you know what you’re publishing then you’ll want to know what your audience is consuming. How can you accomplish this, well by using web analytics software. Where can you find one? Google has a free option that tracks your websites performance.

The blog goes on to discuss how you can optimize your search engine and discussed key terminology like spiderandrobots that refer to small computer programs and indexing that means larger more powerful programs on the search engines and queries that refers to the actual word used to search in the Google, Bing databases.

Mark Briggs said that, “Visual Journalism/the backpack journalist is about telling compelling stories that connect an audience with subjects, people and issues.” I think that statement is true because whenever I see a documentary, or watch the news the images that supplement the story do compel emotion from me, the viewer. Video journalism, but more specifically video story telling is very powerful.

Chapter eight of JournalismNext discusses some very helpful topics about the way the digital video revolution came to be and how now a $200 camera and a laptop can produce high quality web video that is equivalent to a $35,000 camera and a two-person crew. He goes on to discuss how now with the impact of digital video and more amateurs publishing frequently more and more schools are giving their students formal training in shooting and editing. This will give those interested in perusing a journalism degree an advantage. Those journalists will become as Briggs puts it, backpack journalist. They’ll work solo and play the roles of reporter and videographer on their given assignment. BBC did a story on this and it thought it was quite interesting.

Let’s talk about some of the helpful tips that Briggs discusses in order.

Plan your video and go. Ask yourself how will the video tell the story? Because the news is happening and it’s not something you can always plan for. I never really asked myself this question but it seems so simple now.

Mix your shots. Focus on obtaining a variety of wide, close-ups, medium and tight shots. I like this because as a “newbie” with this type of technology you could say, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and lost or just think that whatever you shoot is good material.

Effective video interviewing. Know your surrounding. Never really thought about how the background could work against me but it’s true it could. Briggs says that picking an environment that complements the topic of the story is important.

Shooting good video. Finally, Briggs discusses the importance of knowing the equipment. I feel that knowing the equipment allows smoother transitions and more creativity.

I enjoyed reading this chapter because it was more than just informational; it opened my mind up and gave me a sense direction. I especially like the section where he talks about being in the editing room making the calls to make sure the best clips make it in. This chapter is informative and helpful but I think that Angela Grant said it best. She said, “The only way to learn video journalism is by doing it.” I am really looking forward to getting the equipment and getting the mistakes out of the way and getting a good story.

I’m going to upload a link about a travel videographer named Tomas who gets paid to travel the world to shoot promotional video for tourism companies. Although he is pretty much promoting what he does, I think his b-roll supplements the story. His technique is illustrated well and he has a variety of shots in there. He has wide shots, tight shots and what Briggs calls a five-shot sequence. He uses his environment and is extremely creative with the angles he uses. I really enjoyed this chapter and I hope my interpretation of the Briggs’ tips were helpful.

Journalism is a constant changing profession. It is a forever growing and evolving industry. Author of Journalism Next, Mark Briggs takes us to the digital world in chapter one and calls journalists, “digital workers.” What does he mean by that? I think he means that in order to fully understand and use the Internet to our benefit Journalists must know the most basic facts about the Internet. They have to break down barriers of acronyms and jargon like MB and RSS in order to better understand how the Internet and technology work. Chapter one basically does just that; it breaks down acronyms and explains how the Internet works not just for journalist but also for everyone. Knowing how the Internet works I think is important because it can then be used as a tool to gather and disseminate information quickly. There’s a lot of valuable basic information that would otherwise be taken for granted in chapter one. For example, the fact that the World Wide Web is not synonymous with the Internet is interesting and also that the Internet Protocol address, also known as the IP address, is a unique numeric identity of a web server location. So, basically if the FBI wanted to find you they could just by looking at the IP address and locate that server and find you. Briggs goes on to discuss how web browsers work and how to customize your homepage with stories and information you choose. Chapter one is a good starting point because it introduces the vocabulary and explains the basics thoroughly.

“The great thing about a blog for an old-fashioned beat reporter like me is that it’s journalism at its core.” John Cook former business reporter and co-founder of GeekWire said that. Blogging can help journalists build a community that helps and collaborates with them. I agree with chapter two of JournalismNext blogging has forever changed the way that information is shared in our society. I like the idea of being able to update a blog constantly and writing it very much like a conversation, makes it easier to formulate my ideas and my thoughts flow easier. Blogs just seem right for journalists they’re simple, immediate and interactive. Blogs can be targeted to niche audiences and most importantly blogs can be about anything from motherhood to food to old age. Briggs takes your hand and walks you through starting your own blog. He walks you through choosing a blog system to naming your blog and then customizing your blog’s appearance. Personally I must admit that having my own blog didn’t interest me until I read chapter two of this book and realized that blogs are a fast and efficient way to spread information and I have the ability to voice my opinion. Some of my favorite blogs are Ring My Bell and Trop Rouge. Both blogs are fashion blogs but I like the creativity and the concept that clothes and accessories can be used as a form of art. These two chapters have given me a lot of useful information that will make it easier for me to understand the capabilities of the Internet and allow me to create a community that will interact with me. I did some research and found that thegardian was having master and beginner classes so why not take advantage of the opportunity! Also I found some really helpful sites like Wix.com and squarespace.com. Now squarespace is a little pricey but definitely worth the price, it’s one of the most professional templates and with all its cool templates it gives your blog a really professional look! I hope you enjoy!

Google is the perfect search engine because it understands what you want and delivers!

The Ten Core Beliefs:

1. Focus on users

2. best to do one thing really well, fast is better than slow

3. Democracy on the web works

4. you don’t need to be at you desk to be the professional/ the answer

5. MANY MORE!

Corporate Culture: Google has diverse employees who share a common goal and visions for the company! The strive to maintain a close connection/relationship with all their google employees.

Google+: is the 2nd largest networking site within google community

Circles: key if you want tot share within the google community

Hangouts:is an instant messaging and video chat platform

Best uses: Circles and hangouts, google pages, business pages, set u[ to interact with consumers!

Problems: not a huge amount of like ability and it forces people to join!

overall really helpful presi! this next link recommended users allows you to add who like in your circle, I like it because it has everything in a nice neat category , it has podcasts, bloggers, and many more!

Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that offers a visual discovery, collection, sharing, and storage tool. Users create and share the collections of visual bookmarks (boards). Boards are created through a user selecting an item, page, website, etc. and pinning it to an existing or newly created board. Users save and share pins from multiple resources onto boards based on a plethora of criteria, e.g., similar characteristics, a theme, birthday parties, planning a vacation, writing a book, interior decorating, holidays. Boards can develop projects, organize events, or save pictures and data together. This group had a really fun social media outlet even though I must admit I was never interested in Pinterest I am now!

I love that it’s so visual and free! you can bookmark anything like projects, adventure, dishes pretty much any idea that seems interesting. This video is a bit long but it was helpful to me because like I said I didn’t know the first thing about using this medium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJwyWd6GQ40

The Wall street Journal took advantage of this social media outlet and used it as marketing by ‘live pinning’ fashion week. So it’s followers could keep up constantly and of course pin it to their boards. Another way other businesses can use Pinterest is by giving life to old content! revamp up some old post and do it different. reinventing will keep your followers coming back.

Try to avoid nudity, bad posts, things that have no content value! Pinterest is of course visual so keeping it nice and neat but also posting creative things will keep people coming back, I really enjoyed this presentation, I gotta go create my own!

Facebook is an online social network service, that was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University roommate Eduardo Saverin. It was originally made for Ivy-leauge student to connect but then later turned into the 21st largest social network. I liked their animated video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HgdRmjzaC4 they added it was nice to see it animated.

I like what Nina said about being a great platform for businesses, because you can rearrange the profile to appear neater and more organized that way if someone posts something that’s not necessarily good you can place it at the bottom of your comments and really good comments at the top. This differs from the regular or more popular version where the layout is more personal. The follow feature is good because you can still follow a person that has denied your friend request, if their profile is public. This way you don’t have to commit to being friends you can just have followers.

I really like that Rebecca mentioned being transparent especially for journalist because it’s important for your friends/followers have easy access to your profile and your content. This leads me into what I want to talk about next which Rebecca mentions too and that is keep it professional! Make sure the content is reputable and you have the proper attributes. This will make your community trust you and allows for interactivity. But it’s important to know your audience, you won’t have many followers if what you’re saying isn’t relevant to what they want to hear.

Most importantly be organic, the most successful posts are the ones that are unique and show your post through unpaid distribution.